Dedicating a single person to handling incoming prospective clients is critical. I’ve long advocated that position.

Of course, if you’re big enough, you can dedicate more than one person. I recently visited a personal injury firm that had a room full of people handling incoming new client calls. Very impressive.

I’m not going to devote time today to explaining why I think you need a specialist for this task—we can talk more about that another day.

However, once you adopt my philosophy and have one person focus on this task, you’re going to find that this person won’t last in that role forever.

Intake people have a shelf life. They start to burn out, run out of gas, become irritable, and need to transfer to some other role in your firm or move on. It’s reasonable for them to burn out. It’s to be expected given the nature of listening to upset people in crisis all day long. It’s something the best people can only take for so long.

These people don’t, however, all last for the same period of time. They don’t come stamped with an expiration date. Some people burn out on the task in 9 months, and others last two or three years. How can you tell when they’re done?

Don’t expect them to come to you and say, “I’m tired of the job and want to move on.” They don’t do that. They keep working and working long after they’ve passed their prime.

Of course, you won’t want to look for burnout in the position. It’s no fun to have to remove the person or to find and train a replacement. From both an employer and an employee perspective, it’s easier to leave well enough alone and keep the existing person in the position.

Unfortunately, doing nothing results in economic damage. You’re losing out on potential clients who otherwise might have hired your firm.

Let’s do some quick math. Let’s say you are retained by 50% of your consults, and let’s say your average fee is $10,000. Let’s also say that your initial consultation fee is $500. That means that the value of the average consultation is $6,000.

Let’s say your intake person is suffering a bit as a result of burnout and loses one consult out of ten who might have come in had a fresh, energetic, and enthusiastic person been on the job. Let’s say you do 30 consults per month. Big problem!

The burned-out call screener is costing you $18,000 in revenues per month. Your reluctance to make a change is costing you $216,000 per year. Not good.

So how can you tell when it’s time for a new person?

The obvious way is to check the trend on your gross number of consults. If it’s going up, you’re good, right? Down, bad?

Not so fast. In a crazy economic climate and/or in a fast-growing firm, those numbers can be all over the place. You can’t rely on the gross consults number.

So what can you trust?

One number really reveals the health of your intake person. It’s the cancellation rate.

Look hard at the number of consults scheduled and the number of no-shows and cancellations. That rate will go up significantly when your call intake person reaches burnout. That’s when it’s time for someone new—fast.

When we hire someone for this position, we explain burnout to them. We tell our new hire that this is a position in which he or she will learn a great deal and that it will open up opportunities in other areas. We help this person understand how this position promotes rapid growth. With that kind of preparation, your candidate isn’t surprised when, one day, it’s time to move on. The key is knowing when that day comes.